Let us receive the announcement of Lent with joy!
For if our forefather Adam had kept the fast,
We would not have been deprived of paradise.
O Lord, who took flesh from the Virgin
in the fullness of time,
Call me back and restore me to Eden!
– Byzantine Vespers
We begin our celebration of Lent with the imposition of ashes on
- Wednesday at Noon
- Wednesday at 5:30pm
You thumbed grit
into my furrowed brow,
marking me
with the sign of mortality,
the dust of last year’s palms.
The cross you traced
seared, smudged skin,
and I recalled other ashes
etched
into my heart
by those who love too little
or not at all.
– Elizabeth-Anne Vanek in Extraordinary Time
(Ash Wednesday is a day of fast and abstinence)
